NCES to Examine Content Of Algebra 1 Courses

Washington

Long considered a crucial portal to the world of postsecondary education and a launching point for more complex studies of mathematics, Algebra 1 is at the heart of most students’ academic schedules in the late middle grades or early in high school.

Despite its increasing importance in schools, though, many observers say there is little uniformity in how that course on the relations and properties of quantities is taught, or what students are expected to learn while taking it.

Troubled by that lack of knowledge, officials at the National Center for Education Statistics are expected soon to launch a first-of-its-kind study of introductory algebra, aimed at exploring the content and...